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Google's plans to bring news to readers before they have even searched for it

Google's plans to bring news to readers before they have even searched for it

Sharon Waxman of TheWrap managed to get some interesting information out of Google CEO Eric Schmidt at a party at Arianna Huffington's mansion on Friday. He told her definitively that Google has no plans to start creating original content, and described Google's vision for news search in the near future.

Schmidt explained to Waxman that Google has plans for a 'solution' to help save newspapers who are struggling from reduced revenue. In about six months, he said, the company will "roll out a system that will bring high-quality news content to users without them actively looking for it," reported Waxman. When they go to Google's site, users will be automatically served the news that interests them as established by the company's latest algorithms. These apply more sophisticated filtering, based on search words, user choices, purchases and others to determine 'what the reader is looking for without knowing they're looking for it."Google believes that as this news will be personalised and targeted, it will be able to sell premium ads alongside it. The creators of the content, however, will not receive a cut from this extra revenue. According to Schmidt, the arrangement will benefit publishers because readers will be offered stories that they are more likely to want to read and therefore newspaper websites will get more hits.

Schmidt told Waxman that the New York Times and Washington Post will be the first two news organisations to participate in the new search mechanism. It is not clear whether this means that they will be the only two publications on a Google search page, or whether they will be adopting this new technology to their own homepages.

The World Editors Forum is the organization within the World Association of Newspapers devoted to newspaper editors worldwide. The Editors Weblog (www.editorsweblog.org), launched in January 2004, is a WEF initiative designed to facilitate the diffusion of information relevant to newspapers and their editors.